Customers look at a display of winter coats in a Sears store in the Brooklyn borough of New York. Company chairman Eddie Lampert has put in a bid to keep the business running in its entirety. Mark Lennihan, AP

Forty-five Kmart stores and 18 Sears stores will be closing in late January 2018, the company said Thursday. Hal Degraff, of Livonia, Mich., stopped by to take a photograph of the Livonia Kmart. He has shopped there for at least a dozen years and said that he will miss it. Bill Bresler, USA TODAY NETWORK

Customers shop at Chicago's last remaining Sears store May 3, 2018 in Chicago. The store, which opened in 1938, is scheduled to close in July. Sears opened its first retail store in Chicago in 1925. SCOTT OLSON/GETTY IMAGES

Signs in the window of a Sears store advertise the store's closing on May 3, 2018 in Chicago. . The store, which opened in 1938, is the city's last remaining Sears store. Sears opened its first retail store in Chicago in 1925. SCOTT OLSON/GETTY IMAGES

On Nov. 3, 2017, it was announced a total of 63 K-Mart and Sears stores have been targeted for closure to cut costs. Traffic passes by a Sears department store in Brooklyn's Flatbush, in New York. Sears, once the monolith of American retail, in March 2017 announced that there is "substantial doubt" that it will be able to keep its doors open. Bebeto Matthews, AP

Generations of Americans picked their holiday gifts from Sears catalogues, first published in 1933. In 2017 Sears brought back its "Wish Book'' with a digital twist hoping to lure consumers back to the retailer of toys, appliances and apparel. Sears, Roebuck and Co.

A shopper walks up to a Sears department store at the Tri-County Mall, in Springdale, Ohio in this March 2017 file photo. Sears will no longer sell Whirlpool appliances, ending a business partnership that dates make more than 100 years. John Minchillo, AP

Customers shop at a Kmart store on Aug. 24, 2017 in Elmhurst, Illinois. Sears Holdings Corporation, the owner of Kmart, said today it was planning on closing another 28 Kmart store including this Elmhurst location. Scott Olson, Getty Images

A sign announcing the store will be closing hangs above a Sears store on Aug. 24, 2017 in Chicago. Sears Holdings Corporation, which owns both Sears and Kmart, said it was planning on closing another 28 Kmart stores. Scott Olson, Getty Images

This is a vintage Sears Roebuck & Co. in Rochester, N.Y. The company that operates Sears, the department store chain that dominated retail for decades, warned March 21, 2017, that it faces "substantial doubt" about its ability to stay in business unless it can borrow more and tap cash from more of its assets. Rochester Democrat and Chronicle via the USA TODAY Network

Sears, which at the end of its fiscal year had about 140,000 employees, said that it expects to continue to try to generate cash from real estate sales and borrowing. Rochester Democrat and Chronicle via the USA TODAY Network

Founded in 1886, Sears was built around its famous catalog that was so complete that entire houses could be ordered -- delivered in pieces to be built on a site. Rochester Democrat and Chronicle via the USA TODAY Network

Sears is under financial pressure and has warned it may fail. But it has seen many better days. Here, Sears store associates in Schaumburg, Ill. help customers shop more than 1,000 doorbuster deals on Thanksgiving Day in 2015 Jean-Marc Giboux, AP Images for Sears

Any deal between Lampert and Sears would also deepen the reclusive executive's financial entanglement with the retailer amid its decline. He has already orchestrated a series of deals in which he has gained control of the retailer's most valuable real estate and other assets.

Lampert's letter consisted of multiple elements. He:

• Signaled his hedge fund, ESL, "would be open to making an offer for Sears’ real estate," which would include assuming the $1.2 billion in secured debt tied to those assets, much of which his hedge fund controls.

As part of such a deal, ESL would lease "some or all of the stores" back to the company "to allow for their continued operation," he wrote.

• Pressured Sears to sell off all or part of the Kenmore brand and effectively offered to buy it. The company has been weighing such a deal for about two years but has not yet found a buyer.